Oaxaca, Mexico, has always been on my bucket list of places I wanted to visit and learn about the food. The opportunity came when my son, Neil, fell in love with the city and instead of staying longer in Chile, came back to Oaxaca for six weeks after spending a couple of weeks there prior to going to Chile.

MAWLAMYINE, Myanmar — On the stairway rising to Moulmein’s great Buddhist shrine, the visiting British writer Rudyard Kipling was inspired to pen one of the most anthologized poems of the English language.

BOSTON — On a chilly winter morning here, two furnaces inside the Massachusetts College of Art and Design burn at upwards of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat is palpable as you enter the room, but it doesn’t seem to bother a group of students working nearby.

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s an only in Silicon Valley kind of story: A well-to-do private Catholic high school makes a $15,000 investment five years ago in the company developing the Snapchat app, holds onto it for years and ends up with a windfall of $24 million.